To be a pedestrian in London is to be strong. Tube strikes? Bus delay? No fear — you can get there quickly anyway. And traffic? Make it stop for you. There are no jaywalking rules here.
Against this backdrop of people taking to the streets whenever they wish, Waymo plans to launch its fully autonomous robotaxis this year.
“We treat London with the right amount of humility and respect,” Saswat Panigrahi, Waymo’s chief product officer, told the audience at SXSW London.
A few times throughout the tech festival, I got a glimpse of one of the company Jaguar Pace slow moving cars on the road. Waymo employees have begun driving around the city in Waymo vehicles, of which there are 100 — all of which are currently being supervised by a human driver.
The test in the British capital comes before Waymo opens to the public at the end of 2026. And it’s not the only one. Wayve, one of the UK’s most important AI startups, is also testing its technology on the streets of London. It plans to launch its autonomous service in London this year in partnership with Uber before expanding to Tokyo and the US.
The two companies rely on different technologies: Waymo uses a classic robotics approach based on 3D mapping combined with sensors and lidar, while Wayve uses an AI driver that taps into end-to-end neural networks trained on extensive data. But for Londoners, both options will introduce new experiences to the city’s well-established transport network. Both companies will also have to face many of the same challenges heading into London.
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When I finally try Waymo in London, it won’t be the first time. I’ve been in one of the cars before on a mission to get tacos in San Francisco’s Mission District. On that occasion, struggling to find an exit, Waymo circled the area several times before letting me out.
London is not a grid-based city but instead packs complex one-way systems into its labyrinthine ancient streets. If the car misses the chance to stop, it can be very difficult to fix. It’s like driving through San Francisco’s Chinatown but all the time, Waymo spokesman Ethan Teicher told me in an interview at the company’s SXSW London headquarters.
Waymos is ready for the rain.
Working in the city means “solving the most difficult cases,” said Wayve’s vice president of commercial and operations, Kaity Fischer, speaking at SXSW London. It has 20 times the amount of construction going on in San Francisco, and 10 times the number of pedestrians at risk, he added — and it’s not just pedestrians.
Unlike Waymo, which already has a presence in cities across the US, London is Wayve’s first market for private taxis, so it’s learning all its lessons here before going elsewhere. But it has been testing its cars on British roads since 2019.
Waymo, meanwhile, has only been testing in London since the end of last year, but will use the experience it has gained from more than 20 million rides to inform its London expansion. These, in turn, will provide learning to help the company operate elsewhere.
London (mostly) welcomes its own robotaxi bosses
To the extent that any autonomous vehicle company can operate in any given city, it needs policy makers and regulators on its side. In the US, many states and even cities have their own performance standards, which define emissions by category.
The same is not true in the UK. “The government has been incredibly supportive as we introduce and use our technology right now,” said Fischer. The UK is the first country to have a nationwide strategy to get autonomous cars on the road, making it easier for companies like Wayve, he added.
London was the first natural choice for Waymo in Europe, Teicher said. It is a global city with a large potential customer base of both residents and visitors from other countries who may be experiencing Waymo in the British capital for the first time. And, he added, “the city has very clear goals in terms of safety and transportation, and we think this technology helps achieve many of those goals.”
Waymo had a booth at this year’s SXSW London to launch the cars in the city.
London also wants to help people find solutions for the last mile, which Waymo is not ready for, Teicher said. “We already know that Londoners think about transport in a step-by-step way,” he said, adding that the company was delighted to offer a safe, accessible, clean and comfortable alternative to London’s established transport system.
That ecosystem includes iconic modes of transportation, including the Tube underground system, red Routemaster buses and black cabs. The latter may prove as unwelcoming to Waymo and Wayve as local politicians have been.
When Uber first arrived in the city, London’s black cab drivers — who had to pass a test known as Knowledgewhere they testify their encyclopedic understanding of the streets of London — he protested loudly. Last year, the Guardian reported that the number of black cab drivers registered with Transport for London had fallen from 22,810 in 2013-14 to 14,470 in 2023-24.
I ask Teicher if Waymo is prepared for the potential backlash from the city’s registered remedies. “They are skilled professionals,” he said. “We respect what they do, what they mean to the city, and we don’t see ourselves changing them soon.”
The company will be part of the popular car ecosystem when it launches, he added. “We’re not going to be the whole ecosystem.”
And he welcomes competition from Uber and Wave. “It puts pressure on us all to do our best to get better, learn from each other, and ultimately it’s a win for Londoners,” he said.